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Wyvern

Wyvern

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Wyvern
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  • Live Mapping: Darklands City

    Sorry to say I missed this live today, as my ISP decided it wanted the afternoon off, so arranged "a major outage in my area", that seems to have lasted most of the afternoon and early evening. Took me nearly 40 minutes to get through to them on the phone ("You can find the answer to most questions more quickly by using our website"...), despite the fact my call was apparently important to them, as the nice lady bellowing in my ear kept insisting. Which had of course already given me the clue that it wasn't just me that was having the problem...

    Joys of technology, eh?

    JimP
  • Live Mapping: Darklands City

    There's a Darklands City now? Didn't see that coming - but only 'cos y'know, dark...๐Ÿ˜Ž๐ŸŒ‘๐Ÿ”ญ

    LoopysueJimPCalibre
  • Annual No 1, Issue no 8 - My example of the Spaceship style.

    You could also have masts below the decks, from the base of the craft, though that depends if it needs to land or not, or horizontally out from the sides. There is a probable balance issue with masts only on the top - wind in the sails there will tend to tip the craft over end to end. Sailing ships rely on heavy friction with the sea, and their ballast plus keels to stay upright, but in the air, none of this is an option. Looks nice though, I know!

    Magical engines would be more likely than combustion engines, I'd have thought. Combustion engines are just so incredibly inefficient, it's hard to believe those with access to magic wouldn't come up with something far better and more elegant.

    As for propellers, the basic real-world concept derives from the Archimedes screw, c.200 BCE, so some bright Strompheian folks could have developed something similar for aerial use already, perhaps.

    [Deleted User]JimP
  • WIP: D&D 5e Random Dungeon Tiles

    As with other things taken as "universal beliefs" by many (especially elsewhere on the Internet...), the spiral-staircase thing seems to have been a purely late Victorian/Edwardian speculative invention; see this usefully-referenced blog posting, for example.

    JimP
  • Annual No 1, Issue no 8 - My example of the Spaceship style.

    Interesting. I can though see problems from a practical military usage and command perspective.

    The weapons are mounted too high up. A couple of options on the lower and/or upper deck would be OK for aerial threats. There needs to be another weapons position in the hold for tackling lower aerial and ground threats, however.

    The bridge at only the rear of the upper deck is OK for a secondary command position/emergency bridge. There needs to be another and main bridge higher and/or further forward though, and observation positions (ports at least) at various places on the lower and hold decks, as visibility is purely upwards over most of the craft currently. The hold could also use a bomb bay for vertical delivery of heavy ordnance, and as a crew escape mechanism.

    There's a lot of wasted space on the lower-upper deck in the middle of the craft where the masts run through (and what are those stacked (?) grey squares there?). Does this whole area need to be so open? Or could the stores and crew quarters not be moved into here? Ordinary crew don't need individual quarters either, plus there aren't enough crew. Leaving aside any practicalities of using only upper sails as propulsion on such a craft anyway, for masts this size, you'd need at least four crew, and you should have at least as many observers/signallers as them as well, since they can't all be doing the same jobs simultaneously. If the craft is expected to regularly operate for more than half a day at a time, as the quarters, mess, etc., imply, there should be enough crew of all types to manage multiple watches/shifts, essentially at least doubling the crew overall. WW1 Zeppelins had crews between about 15-20 on average, and might be airborne for several days at a time, while the WW2 American B17 Flying Fortress bomber had a crew of ten and flew missions lasting about 6 hours or less, for instance, as very approximate equivalents.

    The hatches on the hold deck are a bit confusing, and should be replaced with ladder symbols, I'd say, as the hatches are in the ceiling on that deck, not the floor, if I've understood the keys correctly.

    How do the crew access the exterior of the ship, the balloons, or board and leave it? I see ladders up, but no doors in the upper outer surface, for instance, and no external doorways elsewhere.

    If you're not wholly committed to the masts option, I'd suggest thinking of using the base of the balloon pods as places for magical propeller engines and individual rudders (again, see Zeppelins) instead.

    JimP